Lego Movie 2 Trailer Is A Mad Max Hellscape, But Still Awesome

The LEGO saga continues in the trailer for The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part. While many people had written off the first LEGO Movie from the get-go on principle, the film wound up being a surprisingly thoughtful, heartfelt, and imaginative CGI animated romp, thanks in no small part to the efforts of directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller. The LEGO Movie was even successful enough to usher in a shared universe that has so far yielded mixed returns, going from the highs of LEGO Movie and LEGO Batman Movie to the (relative) lows of last fall’s LEGO Ninjago Movie.

Lord and Miller passed on directing LEGO Movie 2 since, by the time that production was ready to begin, the pair were waist-deep into calling the shots on Solo: A Star Wars Storyinstead. However, after their version of Solo was scrapped and Ron Howard took over as the film’s director, the duo had an opening in their schedule that allowed them to rewrite the LEGO Movie 2 script and lend a helping hand to the sequel’s director, Mike Mitchell (Trolls). By outward appearances, it’s been smooth-sailing for the next LEGO venture ever since.

The LEGO Movie 2 teaser trailer and synopsis confirm that the sequel picks up in real time, e.g. some five years after the events of the first LEGO Movie. Bricksburg is now a Mad Max inspired post-apocalyptic wasteland in the aftermath of the “horrific events of Taco Tuesday” (not that Emmet has really noticed) and finds itself under attack yet again in the film, this time by the “LEGO DUPLO® invaders from outer space”. While it doesn’t make a proper appearance during the teaser trailer, LEGO Movie 2 will also feature “a strange galaxy where everything is a musical,” where Emmet and his friends do battle with the LEGO DUPLO®s.

While the LEGO Movie 2 teaser confirms the sequel will have the same pop culture-informed sense of humor as its predecessor, it doesn’t offer any real insight into how the film will build on the first LEGO Movie‘s themes and subtext about creativity in Hollywood storytelling. The hope is The Second Part will feature similarly intelligent commentary, but it’s certainly possible the sequel will be more strictly targeted at kids than its predecessor was. With Lord and Miller only serving as co-writers this time around, The LEGO Movie 2could prove to be more of a middling animated sequel for it.

That said, the teaser alone pokes fun at one of the sexists tropes in the first movie (e.g. Wyldstyle doing the heavy lifting and Emmet getting most of the credit) and boasts some playful visual gags – so there’s hope yet that everything will be awesome once more.